Replacing Shopify is a bigger decision than picking a cart, because Shopify bundles storefront, product admin, checkout, payments, order management, and an app marketplace behind one hosted control plane. The first real choice is architectural: do you want a single commerce application your team installs and operates, which is how WooCommerce on WordPress, PrestaShop, and nopCommerce work, or a composable, API-first stack where the storefront is a separate frontend talking to a headless backend like Medusa, Saleor, Vendure, or Spree? The monolith is faster to stand up; the headless approach trades that for control over the storefront and the freedom to swap pieces independently.
Expect gaps where Shopify is deliberately polished. Hosted checkout, fraud signals, tax calculation, shipping labels, and abandoned-cart flows usually take more setup outside Shopify, and themes do not port, so even systems with a template layer like PrestaShop or Bagisto need the storefront rebuilt. You also inherit the operational work Shopify used to hide: hosting, backups, upgrades, PCI scope, and monitoring. Some projects soften that with a managed tier, such as Medusa Cloud, Saleor Cloud, or Vendure Cloud, if you want the open codebase without running every server yourself.
Migration itself usually starts with Shopify CSV exports and API pulls for products, variants, customers, orders, and redirects, none of which land perfectly without field mapping and cleanup. Customer passwords never migrate as usable passwords, so plan a reset or passwordless login. Finish with test orders, tax checks, redirect validation, and a DNS cutover you can roll back.
